timknauf

27 ms·

1. 91.▲
   by timknauf 18y ago

   Remember that not everyone lives in the USA. Nearly everything on hulu.com is limited to US IP addresses only, because they're still wrangling with international licensing for most of the shows on there. Online video stores like iTunes and
2. 92.▲
   by timknauf 18y ago

   Interesting. I've encountered errors in a similar vein, which in retrospect must have been caused by using an anonymous list in a similar way to your example: [f1, f2][intIndex]() The 'solution' seems to be something like var fun
3. 93.▲
   by timknauf 18y ago

   Thanks for the detailed reply. People with a background in non-brace-and-semicolon languages are more likely to feel the same way. Yes, and most of them are off happily working with their Pythons, Rubys, Haskells and the like, staying wel
4. 94.▲
   by timknauf 18y ago

   The correct response to which is to politely refer them to ECMA-262 section 7.9 and go on your way. I'll let you know how that goes. I even have a particular person in mind... :^D
5. 95.▲
   by timknauf 18y ago

   I've written JavaScript sans semicolons for years and have not encountered incorrect parsing by any browser. Yes, neither have I - but then I'm doing fairly simple stuff. I do test across a fairly broad range of browsers, though. I find
6. 96.▲
   by timknauf 18y ago

   Okay, putting all talk of practicality (interpreters, minifiers, convention) aside, let's look at the language itself for a bit; this could lead to some interesting discussion. JavaScript has two ways of designating the end of a statement.
7. 97.▲
   by timknauf 18y ago

   Making them optional in javascript was a ridiculous idea. But since they are optional now, using them throughout our code won't help us for the example above: it would still wrongly return undefined because of the implied statement end.
8. 98.▲
   by timknauf 18y ago

   Welcome to the real world, where "the next programmer to work on this might be dumber than you" is considered a valid justification for cargo-cult programming. Yes, I am a little surprised that some of the responses have assumed that beca
9. 99.▲
   by timknauf 18y ago

   Well, Python will let certain statements continue over multiple lines as well, e.g. someFunction(parameterOne, parameterTwo) I think maybe the difference is that Python has always treated newlines the way it does now.
10. 100.▲
    by timknauf 18y ago

    Yeah, not really my favourite bracketing style either. Good example though - it is conceivable that this could happen.
11. 101.▲
    by timknauf 18y ago

    Interesting. I hadn't come across that idiom before. In Python, you'll have things like: myLongList = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] No continuation character is needed, because the continuation is implie
12. 102.▲
    by timknauf 18y ago

    Thanks for the responses, everyone! Sounds like - regardless of what I might think of semicolons personally - the reality of the current crop of minifiers and JavaScript engines makes a case for their continued use. Now, how about ActionScr
13. 103.▲
    by timknauf 18y ago

    Hmm, interesting point. I've never worked on a truly large JavaScript codebase; it would be interesting to test the effect of implicit and explicit termination on various JavaScript engines. Presumably the performance penalty would apply to
14. 104.▲
    by timknauf 18y ago

    Keep in mind that I come from a mainly Python and Ruby background; both of those languages have always had newline-terminated statements. Yes, neither Python nor Ruby nor newline-terminated Javascript would return the desired result. But
15. 105.▲
    by timknauf 18y ago

    Thanks for the considered response: this sort of background information is exactly what I was looking for.
16. 106.▲
    by timknauf 18y ago

    I wasn't intending to come across as being anti-code-conventions! I love coding and I'm a bit shocked that my questions suggest to you that I might have a sloppy coding style in general. :^) I agree that conventions and shared idioms are e
17. 107.▲
    by timknauf 18y ago

    Hah, do I detect a little light jab in your lack of punctuation? I guess it partly depends on how you view the relationship between programming languages like Javascript and the typographical conventions of natural languages like English. I
18. 108.▲
    by timknauf 18y ago

    Hmm, I hadn't considered the minification context - good point. That said, doesn't HTTP compression make minification largely unnecessary? As for convention: yes, I have indeed had some funny looks when asking this question in real life (no
19. 109.▲
    Ask HN: Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript?

    13 points by timknauf 18y ago|39 comments